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Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Battle of Tereventum - Part I

Today we got together to play another game in our ongoing 2nd Punic War campaign. This one pitted equal sized Carthaginian and Roman armies fighting over the province of Tereventum. To the left you can see the initial Roman deployment.

Here, opposite the Romans are the Carthaginians. Opting for a larger quantity of slightly lesser quality troops the Carthagian army has less battle groups, but they contain many more bases of figures. The Carthaginian cavalry is also more numerous and of higher quality than the Roman cavalry.

As the battle progressed the Carthaginians advanced across all fronts with their cavalry pushing one flank and their Elephants surging ahead of their heavy infantry. The Romans advanced in a large wheel maneuver towards the only major terrain feature - an enclosed agricultural field.

Early on the Roman's Italian allied infantry had great success pushing into the fields routing the Carthaginian medium infantry. One Roman legion was able to route a Gaul cavalry unit a well. From there things stabilized for a few turns. The Carthaginians lost an elephant unit, then the Romans lost a legion, then another Carthaginian elephant.

Things stabilized for a while longer then heated up on the other flank. The larger Carthaginian Numidian light cavalry destroyed a smaller Roman Numidian light cavalry unit. Before we ended for the day the Spanish heavy cavalry crushed two Roman legions in succession in a few turns. In both engagements the Spanish were fighting 1:3 odds against and still destroyed the Roman infantry - crazy!

We had to break for the night. We hope to finish the battle next Friday night. The battlefield stands about as depicted in the photo to the left. The Carthaginians have a good advantage on the right flank, the Romans on the left. In the middle things are up in the air, although there's a remaining pair of Elephants that have burst through the Roman lines. As Roman commander I'm a bit nervous about the outcome of this battle at this point. What we did learn today is things can change quickly and being on the short side of the odds isn't necessarily a death sentence.